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Monday, October 2, 2017

[FTC Standard Disclaimer] I have a agreement with Char-Broil® to provide content (recipes/tips/pictures) for their website and I received the pictured grill as part of that compensation package; however, this is not a sponsored post.

I just returned home from a food related business conference and every time you turned around, someone was giving you some delicious creation to eat. It was nice being catered to but the first thing I wanted to do when I got home was cook for myself.

It was an absolutely gorgeous Saturday morning with warm sunshine and a pleasant early Fall breeze so it was a day for breakfast outside. I scrambled through the fridge and found a few things.

Oaxaca cheese - A Mexican cheese that has a buttery flavor, semi-soft texture, and melts quite well. We call it Mexican Mozzarella because it is similar, but we like Oaxaca better.

Goetta sausage - a sausage with German heritage from Cinncinati that is pork sausage that contains oats.

I used those to create these fantastic breakfast bowls.

The base was roasted Hatch green chile cheese grits and that's the only recipe I'll list here since you don't need a recipe for scrambled eggs or sausage. The key is to use stone ground grits and to take your time cooking them.

Stone ground grits take forever to cook but it's worth it. The package I had said 25 minutes but I always use a bit more liquid and cook the grits about an hour. I try not to be a food snob but quick grits and stone ground grits are two different things.

Fire Roasted Hatch Green Chile Cheese Grits

Ingredients

1 cup stone ground grits, rinsed and chaff skimmed out

3 1/2 cups chicken stock

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon dried minced onion

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/2 cup diced fire roasted Hatch green chiles

4 ounces shredded Oaxaca cheese

Instructions

Combine grits, 3 cups of stock, butter, dried onion and salt in a medium sized pot over medium-high heat. When it begins to actively simmer, reduce heat and keep it at a simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in the chiles and shredded cheese. Add a little extra stock if needed to adjust the consistency of the grits. Cook until tender, about 15 more minutes.

Taste for seasoning, add salt and pepper as desired.

I used my Char-Broil® Commercial grill because I wanted to use its cast iron plate on the side burner for cooking the sausage. But I also needed the side burner to cook the grits. No problem, I just put the cast iron plate directly on the cooking grates and that worked just fine.

I learned about Goetta sausage when I first went to Porkopolis Eggfest in Cincinnati. It is pork sausage with pin head or steel oats ground in, which give it a unique texture. I'd describe eating Goetta as biting into a cross between a crisp hash brown patty and a sausage patty. You'll either love it or hate it, I reside firmly in the "love it" camp. Gliers is the most popular brand, they make a million pounds a year and 99% of that is eaten in the greater Cinncinnati area.